


Better Than A Hallmark Card

by grasssea



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/F, Kittens, short little fic for the best pairing out of this new season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasssea/pseuds/grasssea
Summary: Maze gets unorthodox relationship advice, gives unorthodox gifts, somehow makes it work. She's just that good.





	

“Just….. LEAVVVE IT TO LES-LEY!” Maze and Trixie shouted as the theme music blared from the tv screen.

“I heard this episode Lesley and Lauren find a box of kittens on the side of the road.” Trixie said happily, over the sound of commercials for sugary breakfast cereal . “It was all over Instagram.”

“Kittens,” Maze said tossing another handful of popcorn in her mouth. “They’re the tiny ones with the pointy ears and claws, right?” Usually she heard the word as a petname, the sort of sickly sweet thing human men said when they wanted something they hadn’t earned. Mazikeen didn’t usually do wildlife.

Trixie had grown accustomed Maze’s occassional strange questions. “Yeah, they’re baby cats. They’re really cute and my mom won’t let me get one.” She pouted and pulled a decorative pillow into her lap, kneading it with never-still eight year old energy. “Even though I promised I’d feed it and everything! She says cats are evil.”

Maze raised an eyebrow, “My kind of animal. If I remember, cats used to be accused of stealing the breath of children,” she snapped playfully at Trixie, “So you’re probably better off.”

Trixie looked genuinely offended on the behalf of all feline kind. “They wouldn’t do that! Cats are really sweet and cute, mommy just doesn’t like them because grandma used to have a mean one. But my cat wouldn’t be mean. She’d be the nicest cat ever.”

The show was coming back on, heralded by the Lesley’s very own leitmotif, and Trixie quieted in anticipation, though she kept fidgeting. Maze watched carefully as Lesley and Lauren did, in fact, find a box of abandoned kittens and had to hide them from Lauren’s allergic father and find homes for them.

Hijinks ensued.

It was all very human-cute, with the subtle dirty jokes that Maze had come to expect from the Leave it to Lesley crew. Trixie laughed when the kittens escaped, Maze laughed when Mr. Harris swelled up in hives, they both enjoyed the chase scene down the halls of the school as the evil principal tried to put the heroines and kittens in detention. Trixie cooed as Lesley handed the last kitten to her on and off love interest, the ever dreamy, slightly bland, Kevin.

“I still think Lauren should have gotten to keep a kitten.” Trixie sighed. “There are ones that aren’t bad for allergic people. Addison told me that.”

“Do humans really do that?” Maze inquired, stretching.

“Do what?” Trixie’s nose wrinkled up in that way that made Maze inclined to smile.

She shrugged, “Give each other small animals. Not even to eat or anything. I knew about flowers and chocolate,” she had done some research lately, “but I didn’t know they could give each other living things, other than small humans and the occasional disease.”

“Well, I’d like it if someone gave me a kitten.” Trixie said, big brown eyes turned on Maze. “I’d love them forever and ever.”

Maze let out a low noise of disbelief “No, not crossing your mom there. She’d drag Lucifer into it and then there’d b a grownup fight, you’d hate it.”

Trixie’s face crumpled. “When I grow up I’m going to have seventeen cats.” she informed Maze.

“You do that,” Maze said solemnly. “Now, do you want to help me acquire a kitten or not? Not for you,” she added hastily, "for someone else."

Trixie jumped up and shrieked. Maze hoped small cats weren’t quite as loud as small humans were.

 

 

 

Linda had an awe-inspiringly well rounded and deep education in talk therapy and psychoanalysis. She’d spent her doctoral candidacy at one of the best programs in country, being extensively trained in patient management and professionalism. One of the mantras her mentor had hammered into her head was this; E _xpect nothing, anticipate everything._

In short, always be ready to be surprised. Patients didn’t come to you because their lives were dull and predictable.

She still wasn’t prepared for Maze to drop a kitten on her coffee table.

Linda threw her hands up and let out a little squeak of shock. Maze froze. The kitten mewled helplessly.

It was probably a few months old, but mangy and thin, with runny eyes and a fluff of black fur. Linda simultaneously wanted to scoop it up and cradle it gently, and also not touch it until it had a serious bath.

She looked at Maze, who was watching her warily.

“Why?”

“I thought you might like it.” Maze looked, for lack of a better word, flustered. She wouldn’t look Linda in the eye, and she was usually the queen of uncomfortable eye contact.

The kitten stumbled around the table and Linda started carefully boxing him (or her) in with psychology textbooks. The kitten would have to wait, explanations came first.

She tried to look non-judgmental. That was the first and most important part of patient doctor relationships, she had always been told, appearing non-judgemental. Usually Lucifer was the one who made it hard.

“Why don’t you sit down and explain, Maze.” she suggested.

Maze dropped to the futon, her fists clenching and unclenching reflexively. “I thought, you don’t want to sleep with me, but I wanted to say thank you. Somehow. And all the cards, and flowers, they were stupid.”

“So… you got me a very sick kitten?” Linda asked, and she couldn’t help the hint of incredulity i her voice. Maze stood swiftly and moved to grab the kitten but Linda stopped her. “I’m not criticizing, I just want to understand.”

Maze sat back down, brushed her hair behind her shoulder. Her back was ramrod straight. “A… friend of mine said they were cute, and that everyone liked them. Admittedly, we could only find a very sad looking one.”

The kitten meowed in agreement, and headbutted a copy of the DSM-V.

“Where did you even find her?” Linda asked, patting the kitten’s head gingerly and resolving to get it to a veterinarian as soon as possible.

“Some back alley.” Maze tilted her head, “They’re harder to find on the side of the road than television would have you believe?”

“What- wasn’t that the plot of the last Leave it To Lesley episode?” Linda asked, remembering that Maze watched the show. It was one of the things they’d done together during those weeks when Maze had been crashing (for a given value of the term since as far as Linda could tell she never slept) at her apartment. Leave it To Lesley and martinis, under her afghan, with occasional book club discussions of emotions represented in the show.

Maze conspicuously didn’t answer.

Linda held one hand up and blinked, trying to put her thoughts in order. Lesley had given Kevin one of the kittens, hadn’t she? They’d shared on one those significant moments of silently staring into one another’s eyes that made all the kids go wild. She stroked the kitten absently and it nuzzled her hand. Big yellow eyes, slightly unfocused, stared into her soul.

“Maze?” Linda asked, “I appreciate the thought, but pets aren’t the most appropriate gift-”

“Like I said, I can take it,” Maze snapped, and Linda shook her head.

“No! I mean, it needs to go to the vet, at least. I can take it there. I’m not sure my building allows pets, but I’ll figure something out. Just, for future reference. Try not to drop stray kittens on just anyone.”

“It’s not just anyone.” Maze said flatly, “It’s you.”

Linda was used to odd statements and non-sequiturs, but this one had her truly lost for words.

Maze continued slowly, “You’ve helped me. A lot. Helped me figure out who I want to be and where I belong, how to fit it. I wanted to to do something human, to show that I appreciated it. That I appreciate you.” The jut of her chin was practically confrontational, at odds with the strange softness of her words.

 _I thought, you don’t want to sleep with me,_ that was what she’d said.

“Maze,” Linda said, name first to create rapport, just like she’d been taught, “Are you… hitting on me?”

“No,” she said, “When I hit on you, you’ll be able to tell. This is more… preliminary.” Maze didn’t mince words, she never had, as far as Linda could tell. She said what she meant, and she meant what she said.

Linda was not as commendably blunt. “Oh.”

“So, do you want the cat, or not?” Maze demanded. The kitten quivered.

“I don’t know-” she said, the situation finally overwhelming her. “It needs some medical treatment, it’s sick, but I can take it….”

“It likes you.” Maze observed, crouching to watch it bat at Linda’s hand. “You have appointments, don’t you? I’ll take it to the vet, and then come back and we can talk it over.”

Linda should have jumped at the chance to gather her thoughts, start over later. There was so much she wanted to say, and she wasn’t quite sure how to say it. “There’s a nice veterinary practice down the street.” she offered instead. “We can go together before my one o’clock.”

Maze regarded her with eyes like antique furniture, stained dark by age and secrets. “I’d like that,” she said as she scooped the kitten into her jacket.

She didn’t offer Linda a hand as they walked out, but she did give her a few backward glances, and it was the thought that counted.

 

 

 

 

Lucifer found Maze on the floor of Lux, letting something small and fuzzy drive itself to distraction trying to chase the end of a whip, that Maze kept moving away from it.

“Maze, what is that?”

“Lesley.” Maze smirked. “That or Apollyon, I haven’t decided yet.”

“Yes, yes, but why is it _here_? In _my_ club?” He’d known Maze was going through an unsettled phase, the demonic version of a midlife crisis, but this- this was flat out perverse.

“It’s mine.” Maze said, like it was no big deal. “He’s deaf so he wouldn’t have made it very long in the shelter, would you?” her voice dropped into a baby talk whisper as she tickled the kitten under the chin. If this was a dream, Lucifer decided, it was a very strange one. The kitten, looking like a tiny witch’s familiar- all black with a scrap of red collar around it’s tiny neck, wandered off the explore the labyrinth of chair legs around it. Maze stood and put a hand on her hip, her expression daring Lucifer to make a comment.

“Maze?”

“What?” she asked brusquely and Lucifer decided to back off. Sometimes, you had to pick your battles.

“I rather prefer Apollyon, if it’s all the same to you,” he said, meek as a lamb.

“Noted.” She bent over to snatch the kitten from the top of one of the barstools, where he was making eyes at the long jump to the ground. “Also, I won’t be here Friday night. Call in Josephina to handle things.”

“Hot date?” Lucifer asked sarcastically, still a little off balance at the image of Maze with an adorable animal, looking as natural as an amateur porn star.

Maze grinned, smug. “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> They end up timesharing the kitten and dating for a few months before Linda talks her building head around and gets permission to let Maze and Lesley/Apollyon move in with her.


End file.
